P A R T IV : Finale
I felt an intense heat on my face and saw a bright red glow through my eyelids. I woke up in a frenzy and saw a bursting light that consumed everything. My first waking thought was: The comet!
I leap-crawled from the bed to the curtain-sealed window — the shockwave would be here any second — I had to see it! I clutched the curtains with both hands and opened them just wide enough to peer outside, still on my knees, ready to duck down. The terror of seeing the blinding ball of light was accompanied by an odd sound. Children laughing?
As my eyes adjusted, I saw two kids playing with Transformer dolls on the shared balcony of the hotel. Beyond them: the street, then a forest silhouette, a clear sky, and the Sun — mercilessly making its presence known.
This feat of paranoia was caused by the blazing light of the rising sun hitting my eyes directly through a small vertical slit between the blackout curtains, and amped by my month-long anxiety about the comet impact. Yet another embarrassing moment that I wasn’t going to share with anyone. My brother, who missed my 'reverse Sarah Connor dream reenactment', was beginning to wake up on the other bed.
It was July 16th, 2006, a clear, sunny day in Bremen, Georgia, and the world was still here.
The morning continued uneventfully. We enjoyed our first continental breakfast at the hotel, walked the Rottweiler, checked the headlines. By then, our fears of Florida sinking in a mega-tsunami had pretty much fallen to zero. It was clear: we had bought into a false internet conspiracy theory and wasted a lot of time and money on a trip to the middle of nowhere. My Dad never left New York either — his supposed retreat to the Pennsylvania’s mountains was intercepted by skepticism.
During breakfast at the cafeteria, I was eyeing the pine-covered hill on the other side of the road. It wasn’t very tall, but for a Florida resident who hadn’t seen any rise in elevation for over five years, this was a landmark! I asked one of the hotel staff if there were any bears in Georgia.
“Yees, of course, miss!”
“And on that hill across the road?” I asked.
“Ahh, no, no bears there.”
I could see a narrow, weathered road going toward the hill right from our hotel. I couldn’t see where it led, but based on the map, it should have ended somewhere near the summit.
I turned to my brother, “We should go up there.”
“Doesn’t look like much to do there.”
“I know. But let’s check it out. I just want some nature before we go home.”
“Ok, but let’s take the car so we don’t look like we’re trespassing.”
My sister was tied up with phone calls on her real estate deals, and our Mom wanted nothing do do with hiking in the heat of mid-July. So it was just the two of us.
The day was indeed scorching. We waited for the sun to dip a little, but ended up killing too much time. By the time we started our trip up the hill, the sun was already slipping toward the other horizon.
The road was curving gently upwards, with thick pine groves on both sides, casting long shadows along the cracked asphalt. Just a few turns later, our trip was halted by a rusty triangular gate. There was no “private property” signage, just a forgotten orange contraption blocking my brother's orange car. We left the car parked and continued past the gate on foot.
While walking along the road, my brother spotted something curious between the trees, so we veered off the road and hiked up the wooded hill to have a look. Upon approach, we found a large decaying tree log, blackened by mold, bug-eaten cavities and fungi — a perfect subject for morbid photography. During one of the close-ups, my brother must have accidentally disturbed a large spider cluster, triggering hundreds to scatter in all directions around us. We quickly abandoned the idea of cutting through the forest and bolted back to the car.
Plan B: we drove a short distance back in reverse and stopped by another hidden turn we had noted on our way up the hill. The sun was setting, so this was our last chance to see the summit.
The hidden road was narrow and severely neglected. The eroding asphalt was being smothered by dense pine trees. Though the sun was still hanging in the sky behind us, this stretch of the road resided in perpetual twilight. Headlights clicked on automatically as we pressed on, passing a spot so narrow that my brother had to inch the car between two trees. Then came a steep climb up, an opening in the trees, and there it stood. A black house.
“Oh, shit!”
“Damn…”
“Do you think it’s abandoned?”
“I don’t know, looks fucked.”
“Should we go past it?”
“I wouldn’t.”
It was a wooden cabin style construction, made of pine lumber that had turned black. Windows were partially intact and smudged from the inside with some sort of paint. If there was ever an archetype for a backcountry horror movie house, this was it.
To make things worse, across from the house, on the other side of the road, there was a smaller shed, which in addition to having all the same features as the big house, had even more horrifying things to show.
“Bro, are those tools hanging over there?”
“Yeah, and chains inside... What. The. Fuck.”
“Yeah... I don’t think we should drive past it.”
“This is some Texas Chainsaw Massacre shit!”
“Bro, what if someone comes out? Are we gonna be those white people that made the wrong turn?”
“Yeah, fuck this! We’re out.”
With the engine purring quietly, my brother turned off the headlights, shifted gears, and we began to creep backwards, silently retreating down the hill. We reached the spot where the two pines were choking the road, and had to maneuvering the car back and forth until we finally cleared it. By then, we were in full panic mode, muttering “Gotta go, gotta go” while constantly eyeing the direction where the black cabin loomed, dreading that a silhouette might appear from beyond the ridge.
Then salvation — the golden rays of the setting sun glistened through the back glass of the car, and a wave of relief washed over us as we returned to the open road. Without a second thought, we headed right back to the hotel — to the comfort of the Mexican staff, who most certainly weren't cannibals, and their tacos — our last hope for humanity.
With this, I conclude my adventure story — dedicated to my Dad, who both sparked it into being, and would have loved to read it.
P.S. While my Mom and I returned with all the belonging, the Rottweiler, and the cats, packed in the minivan, back to Florida (where my boss poked fun at me for weeks), my siblings continued to Arkansas in the sports car (with all the dope), where more dusty backroad adventures ensued. But these are not my stories to tell.
Thank you for sticking around!
A N K A P O L O